Motivation:

My family bought a small beach lot in the Philippines. While it will most likely serve as a family vacation house, my family is thinking of turning it into a small resort/AirBnB business that can serve as passive income when my parents retire (or as long as we’re all residing in the USA). By investigating the tourism industry, I hope to inform my family about different services we can offer and designs on the property we’re building so that we can attract and retain potential customers.

Research Questions:

1. Who do we aim to attract?

  • Which country do most tourists come from? (Nationalities of tourists)
    • Based on the data below, the top 5 Tourist Nationalities:
      1. South Korea
      2. USA
      3. China
      4. Japan
      5. Australia (in the earlier years); Taiwan (in more recent years)
  • Is there a trend?
    • Since 2011, South Korea has consistently been the top non-resident tourists that visited Philippines
    • Americans have been the 2nd after South Korea until 2017 when more Chinese tourists have started visiting Philippines more than Americans.
    • Chinese visitors seem to have surpassed the number of Japanese and American visitors in the recent years.

2. How much do they typically spend? And what do they spend money on the most?

  • Top 3 Daily Expenditures
    1. Accommodation Services
    2. Food and Beverage
    3. Transportation
  • Additional Observations:
    • In the recent years (starting 2012), tourists seem to be more interested in spending more money in food and beverages than transportation

Suggestions based on data:

Although we should mainly focus on having Filipino culture and elements to our resorts, we should consider adding multi-cultural elements to help accommodate our visitors. For instance, we can be more hospitable by:
1. Hiring receptionists who can speak one or multiple of the following languages: English, Korean, Chinese, Japanese
2. Offering informative pamphlets over things to do, activities and stores nearby, etc. in the languages listed in bullet (1).
3. Since food and beverages seem to be the top three consumption items, we can partner up with local restaurants or vendors (with food stands) that specialize in Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and American food. We can also offer a bar with popular alcoholic beverage from the top countries. 4. Uncles have experience in Uber/taxi services in Philippines. We can employ family members and provide ready transportation for guests.

Limitations and Things to Improve:

The main limitation was time. There were some major timeline shifts from my other classes that affected my timeline for this project. Because I was limited on time, there were a couple of things I could have used to improve this project:

Extension of this Research: